This set of thirty task cards helps students to really understand the meaning of characterization and use close reading to identify character traits. The activities include:
Choosing character traits from a word bank
Choosing character traits –

This is a set of activities for practice, or assessment, on the vocabulary skills of identifying connotative meanings, knowing the difference between connotations and denotations, comparing positive and negative connotations,and identifying and

This set of revising and proofreading activities consists of fifteen worksheets and provides students with lots of practice on these two important steps of the writing process:
revising
proofreading (or editing)
The revising topics include:

This set of 30 task cards is all about solving and understanding analogies. The tasks include completing a group of analogies, choosing the correct type of analogy from multiple-choice answers, identifying the correct type of analogy without

This novel study for The Cay includes questions for each chapter, a before reading activity, two characterization activities, two context clues activities, and two inferencing activities. Questions are text dependent and written specifically for

Story Elements - this package contains both the PowerPoint and the Worksheet Set to introduce and practice the skills needed to understand story elements including characterization, setting, plot, conflict, and theme with a variety of reading

This set of 30 half-page proofreading, or editing, task cards gives students practice correcting common types of errors. The topics include punctuation, capitalization, grammar, run-on sentences, homophones, and spelling.
Each of these cards

Introduce the vocabulary skills of identifying connotative meanings, knowing the difference between connotations and denotations, comparing positive and negative connotations,and identifying and using synonyms and antonyms, important word

Cause and Effect PowerPoint presentation - to practice or introduce the text structure of cause and effect - with single cause and a single effect, a sequence of causes and effects, and situations with more than one cause or more than one effect.

This set includes twelve practice worksheets about figurative language and imagery. focusing on similes, metaphors, personification, hyperbole, imagery that uses the five senses, and writing with figurative language and imagery.
The twelve

This card game contains questions on major language arts topics including parts of speech, story elements, prefixes and suffixes, figurative language, and reference sources.
It includes 28 question cards, plus four blank cards in case you would

This card game features review questions for Lois Lowry's novel, Number the Stars. I Have . . .Who Has . . ? is a great interactive activity in which every student in the class participates.
This game consists of 28 question cards, plus 4 blank

Spring Reading Comprehension Task Cards is a set of 30 half-page task cards. Each card includes an original, non-fiction reading passage on a topic related to spring, Easter, or various springtime activities. There are six cards each on the

This Story Elements Worksheet Set is a collection of 15 well-designed printable activity sheets for working with any story. The topics include characters and characterization, setting, plot and sequence, conflict, theme, and mixed story

The terms in this card game include: characters, setting, plot, theme, conflict, character traits, exposition, rising action, climax, static character, dynamic character, first person, third person, foreshadowing, and more for a total of 28

This PowerPoint presentation introduces and provides practice with the revising step of the writing process. It teaches students several specific methods of revising their writing. A student notebook page is included which can be printed out in

The thirty half-page task cards include three cards each about nouns, verbs, pronouns, adverbs, adjectives, prepositions, and conjunctions, and one card about interjections. In addition, there are eight cards that are each about several or all of

This PowerPoint presentation provides explanations, examples, and practice revising and expanding sentences by adding various parts of speech, replacing various parts of speech, and combining sentences using words, phrases, and clauses.
This

This End of Year Packet includes activities for the last days or weeks of school including a student booklet, four puzzle pages, journal prompts, an "I Have . . . .Who Has . . . ?" game, and an autograph activity.
The student booklet includes

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TEACHING EXPERIENCE

My experience includes about twenty-eight years of teaching, mainly in middle school. For most of that time, I taught English and Reading, as well as a variety of other subjects in inclusion and self-contained classes. Currently, with my TPT store, I focus on creating teaching resources that are engaging for students and helpful for teachers, and I also stay in touch with teaching by volunteering in a literacy tutoring program.

MY TEACHING STYLE

My style is all about the middle grades, mainly grades 4 through 7. My goal is to create teaching resources that appeal to the active learning style of middle grade kids by using original written passages, colorful designs, and age-appropriate graphics.

HONORS/AWARDS/SHINING TEACHER MOMENT

My favorite reward from teaching is watching kids get really engaged in classroom activities. Hearing that other teachers find my resources useful and reading comments about how their kids enjoy the activities is very rewarding, too.

MY OWN EDUCATIONAL HISTORY

My bachelor's degree is in secondary education with a major in English, and my master's degree is in special education.